About me
Before I was a senior marketing designer, I was a cook at high-end San Francisco Bay Area restaurants (Chez Panisse, Gather). I like to say that I am #StillACook on LinkedIn, because that background still shapes how I approach discipline, craft and collaboration.
Restaurant work taught me to care about the details. The mis en place setup before service. The discipline of doing something the right way even when the room is moving fast. That mindset has followed me into design, especially in high-volume marketing environments where the work needs to be both beautiful and at scale.
I still wake up early at 5am, partly because my body never fully left the cook’s schedule. Those meeting-free morning hours are when I do some of my best thinking: developing campaign concepts, refining a design system, reviewing a proof or thinking through the “next step” for a junior designer’s career. I like beginning the day feeling accomplished.
Kitchens also taught me to stay curious about better ways of working. When sous vide started changing restaurant workflows, I saw how new tools could bring consistency and calm to a fast-moving environment. I have carried that same mindset into marketing design, teaching myself Figma to modernize creative workflows at Rakuten Rewards and later becoming an early adopter of AI-driven creative for major campaign moments.
I am at my best with teams that care about craft and want to make better processes.
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Dung Tran
Pronounced "Young" – it's Vietnamese
https://www.linkedin.com/in/dung-tran-8a934b133
(510) 220-9535